Take a quick look at director Oliver Stone’s IMDB resume and you’ll see that he clearly has a certain fascination with American history: he covered the Vietnam War in early hits Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, profiled presidents in Nixon and JFK, and tackled 9/11 in World Trade Center. The subject matter for W.--his latest project--is in keeping: the biopic, which stars Josh Brolin and hits theaters this Friday, portrays our current head-of-state, George W. Bush.

However, W. isn’t Brolin’s only political performance of the year: he’ll also share the lead with Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant’s Milk--the tragic tale of the country’s first openly gay elected official Harvey Milk. Other stars to look out for in Milk’s cast include Emile Hirsch, James Franco, High School Musical’s Lucas Grabeel, and newcomer Alison Pill.

And there are a few more politically-themed films on the radar: the Watergate scandal gets revisited in Frost/Nixon, while the indie documentary Frontrunners follows the student council election at New York City’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School.